(Lepas anatifera)
A species of shell-fish, often found sticking by its pedicle to the bottom of ships, doing no other injury than deadening the way a little:
"Barnacles, termed soland geese In th' islands of the Orcades."
They were formerly supposed to produce the barnacle-goose! (vide old cyclopedias): the poet, however, was too good a naturalist to believe this, but here, as in many other places, he means to banter some of the papers which were published by the first establishers of the Royal Society. The shell is compressed and multivalve. The tentacula are long and pectinated like a feather, whence arose the fable of their becoming geese. They belong to the order of Cirripeds.